Real shaving using double edged safety razors and brushed-on lather

I went to T K Maxx

Now I know that I said I didn’t need any more shaving soaps and creams, but a journey that went straight past T K Maxx was more than a little tempting and held the potential for a blog article as well. They are a retailer that sells off expensive brands cheap and they have a cosmetics and grooming section so there was plenty of potential there.

The first find was two different shaving creams from St James of London in 150ml glass jars and a fancy box. These were reduced from £14 (which is the price on Amazon) to £5.99 and the choice was Cedarwood and Clarysage or Mandarin and Patchouli, I chose the latter as it promised to be the more interesting experience. A bit of research tells me they are an own brand of Creightons plc, who make many of the creams sold in the top men’s grooming shops in London. So it should be good stuff. The big fly in this particular cream is that I was too stupid to see that it is brushless, so less than ideal. Another fly is that it is £5.95 on Creightons own website.

Next up was 200ml of Pecksniffs Otriental shaving soap, in even fancier packaging, at £7.99, reduced from £20. So Pecksniffs are an upmarket Brighton fragrance house. On their website they don’t have shaving soap, just shaving cream at £20 for 200ml. As soap is more expensive than cream this definitely begins to look like a winner, let’s see how it shaves.

This little trip just shows some of the fun and adventure to be had when you escape the walled garden of the big global shaving companies and when you move away from the aerosol foams and gels that are on every supermarket shelf. And this adventure has a long time to run, I have yet to actually use these three purchases.

4 Comments

Tkmaxx is the UK name of TJmaxx! From my own experience TKmaxx can be fun to shop at and always get end of stock of very very good brands – better know your brands and prices though… Founders Reserve is an average deal…but every so often you will get better brands..I did pick up some alum blocks for near nothing but it never came back on the shelves!